Interesting article and I suspect the reality we perceive is an illusion of something else. Perhaps even a hologram which is another theory.

But think about this. A line is the simplest fractal. You can cut it in half and zoom in forever and it will still be a replica of the whole. Imagine a line that represents a single second in time. Cut it in half and scrap one. You still have a line, but it is a half a second. Do it again, and you now have a quarter second. Do it again, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32.... 1/1048576. How small can it get?

You will eventually have a period of time so small that absolutely nothing in the universe moved or changed making time irrelevant at such a small scale. That is the smallest it can get. That means that time is not a line but a series of discrete points, so innumerable that it only appears to be a line the way we perceive it. Perhaps each point is the speed at which this 'program' we are living in is running and cycling at.

Nothing can ever be perceived or measured between two discrete units of time, so it will always appear as a fluid line to us. This is starting to boggle my mind. Maybe I'm just not thinking small enough and indeed there is a measurable change in the state of the universe even smaller than the quantum level. If there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1, perhaps there is infinite space and time in any given area. Is the universe infinitely minuscule and vast at the same time like a fractal? The more I start thinking the more I start posing more questions!

I like looking at things in layman's terms without the use of big words and simple thought experiments and analogies. What do you guys think? Did that make any sense at all?

Interesting thoughts, HAGART. I think what you have said about time is very similar to what is commonly referred to as the Arrow Paradox: an arrow in flight is completely motionless at every instantaneous moment or 'snapshot' in time, and if time is made up of these moments all stitched together then the arrow should not be able to move at all.Mathematically, I believe this can be represented by the product of zero (time elapsed per moment) and infinity (number of moments to make up total time arrow is in flight) which is an undefined quantity. Perhaps that is why this is indeed a paradox in this model.

Those into Quantum physics and stuff like that. I highly recommend a book called "The Yoga of Time Travel, how the mind can defeat time" by Fred Alan Wolf (I have this book at home, I find it fascinating). He's also got an apparently award winning book called "Taking the Quantum Leap" but I havent read that one..........

Years ago before I knew anything about Quantum psychics, I had a intense meditation experience in which is just like the stuff they talk about in Quantum psychics. I was everywhere and in every space (so there was both near and far happening with everywhere around me, what made things be where they were was where one focused. eg something in the distance was also immediately next to me... everything existed at every point of space.. only appearing somewhere with consciousness thou it could be anywhere). Nothing and all was at every point of space..

The arrow in flight can be in the air for infinity if you had an infinite number of decimal places on your stopwatch. (And to anybody reading this... don't be one of those people who tells me the stopwatch will be too big! The digital display side-scrolls. )

It's just like the coastline paradox. Coastlines are a fractal. The smaller the ruler, the more nooks and crannies you can measure and the coastline is longer. Even a grain of sand, when measuring the coast, will have it's own coves and ridges. How small can you get? You will never finish measuring it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox

So how small can you get? Is the universe infinitely minuscule? IF NO, then it means, the smaller and smaller you go, there is eventually a single point, a single 'pixel' if you will. And perhaps the same goes for time.

IF YES, then we live for eternity between every fraction of a second and never die.

Or maybe we only perceive the universe the way it is, because of the speed of thought we have, because it's not the universe that is a computer, our brains are. A second is a second because it feels like a second.

To move forward on this I would first have to know whether the universe is infinite or not. Or we can just think about it in two directions... one if it were, and one if it were not, keeping in mind, the human robots perceiving it. (YES/NO, TRUE/FALSE, 1 or 0)

Yeah I do think time and the breadth of space are both constructs of our perception, our brains. Imagine if there was an organism so large that it took one hundred thousand years for two synapses to transmit an electric, neurological impulse. It would still think and perceive time the way we do, wouldnt it? It wouldn't be aware of how slow its brain's physiology functions...

You're right. It's all relative. Who's to say we aren't the giants of the universe right now compared to a Who?(Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss)

Maybe there is a small universe in every atom, and to those beings, we are moving and thinking VERY, VERY, VERY slowly. The distance between our synapses is light-years to them. And to us, all the galaxies are just parts of an atom in an even BIGGER universe. They don't perceive our light waves, they have their own that are too small for us to see, just like we can't perceive the wavelengths that are over a galaxy in length that the bigger universe perceives as 'light'. (Of course they are still the same universe because universe means all there is). I don't know what you call that theory.

It's certainly fascinating. Are you thinking of Multiverse Theory? Or do your speculations diverge in that you posit size separates universes rather than the singularities at the hearts of black holes?

This is kind of a long quote. You don't have to read the entire thing. But it basically goes along with what I think you're saying.

"The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but size. Size encompasses life, and the Tower encompasses size. The child, who is most at home with wonder, says: Daddy, what is above the sky? And the father says: The darkness of space. The child: What is beyond space? The father: The galaxy. The child: Beyond the galaxy? The father: Another galaxy. The child: Beyond the other galaxies? The father: No one knows.

"You see? Size defeats us. For the fish, the lake in which he lives is the universe. What does the fish think when he is jerked up by the mouth through the silver limits of existence and into a new universe where the air drowns him and the light is blue madness? Where huge bipeds with no gills stuff it into a suffocating box abd cover it with wet weeds to die?

"Or one might take the tip of the pencil and magnify it. One reaches the point where a stunning realization strikes home: The pencil tip is not solid; it is composed of atoms which whirl and revolve like a trillion demon planets. What seems solid to us is actually only a loose net held together by gravity. Viewed at their actual size, the distances between these atoms might become league, gulfs, aeons. The atoms themselves are composed of nuclei and revolving protons and electrons. One may step down further to subatomic particles. And then to what? Tachyons? Nothing? Of course not. Everything in the universe denies nothing; to suggest an ending is the one absurdity.

"If you fell outward to the limit of the universe, would you find a board fence and signs reading DEAD END? No. You might find something hard and rounded, as the chick must see the egg from the inside. And if you should peck through the shell (or find a door), what great and torrential light might shine through your opening at the end of space? Might you look through and discover our entire universe is but part of one atom on a blade of grass? Might you be forced to think that by burning a twig you incinerate an eternity of eternities? That existence rises not to one infinite but to an infinity of them?

"Perhaps you saw what place our universe plays in the scheme of things - as no more than an atom in a blade of grass. Could it be that everything we can perceive, from the microscopic virus to the distant Horsehead Nebula, is contained in one blade of grass that may have existed for only a single season in an alien time-flow? What if that blade should be cut off by a scythe? When it begins to die, would the rot seep into our universe and our own lives, turning everthing yellow and brown and desiccated? Perhaps it's already begun to happen. We say the world has moved on; maybe we really mean that it has begun to dry up.

"Think how small such a concept of things make us, gunslinger! If a God watches over it all, does He actually mete out justice for such a race of gnats? Does His eye see the sparrow fall when the sparrow is less than a speck of hydrogen floating disconnected in the depth of space? And if He does see... what must the nature of such a God be? Where does He live? How is it possible to live beyond infinity?

"Imagine the sand of the Mohaine Desert, which you crossed to find me, and imagine a trillion universes - not worlds by universes - encapsulated in each grain of that desert; and within each universe an infinity of others. We tower over these universes from our pitiful grass vantage point; with one swing of your boot you may knock a billion billion worlds flying off into darkness, a chain never to be completed.

Size, gunslinger... size."

--Stephen King, "The Dark Tower"

[ Post made via iPhone ]

Last edited by deschainXIX on 12 Dec 2014 00:39, edited 1 time in total.

You didn't give the source, but can always edit. 'Gunslinger' and 'Tower', I guess it's Stephen King. I only know the title of that book and nothing else about it. I guess you can use that, but pales in comparison to the epic tale of Horton Hears A Who!

I suppose we have all thought this sort of thing even dating back to ancient Greeks. Probably even before that, and they simply didn't write it down is all. And now we have computers so we use the newest technology to formulate our 'model of reality'.

I like to stay in the dark and not label things like, Multiverse Theory, and don't read much actually. I mean if there is a multiverse, wouldn't it just be The Universe? All there is. And the reason why I like to stay in the dark is to keep what little is left of my child-like, open minded, curiosity, always asking 'father', what else? Why? (Just like the beginning of that excerpt).

I was questioning size of organisms on our planet (back in 2006) and why there is a limit, both how large and how small. Gravity is one reason, but I figured it probably has to do with the size that water drops coagulate, and how it behaves. I guess there's the size of the oxygen molecule as well... so I am still thinking and just something to ponder.

(And yes, I said molecule because oxygen is always paired: O2) If it is alone it won't be for long. ( I just said, 'long' as if that's a unit of time, but it's not! ) This stuff can make your head spin! It's hard to say anything without finding my own paradox.

Well, what divides and defines separate "universes" are the laws of physics. That's the idea of the multiverse--at a singularity, it is theorized that the laws of physics are warped and diverged from the laws of physics of our own universe. The mechanisms that run the machine are functionally different. But I think you're talking about something different. I see your point.

Yeah, I liked that bit at the beginning about a child being most at home with wonder. But I myself would rather know as much as I can than deprive myself of lucidity and subsequently living in constant fear and ignorance. Flinching at the flashing of the lightning and consequently offering a sacrifice to the sky-gods. There's lots of room for dispute on this matter. That's just my personal preference, and knowledge and literacy have historically been the best ways for a society to progress.

I like literature and labels and the application of nomenclature because I think that's how we can best understand the world. But we have talked about "soft thinking" (as I like to call it--as I like to label it!), which is thinking that can't be articulated or bound by words. My experience, however, is that this sort of thing never really yields anything profound or concrete; it's only the spastic leaps and chortles of the dark half of my mind, when my brain is functioning at a lower rate of consciousness.

I do agree that animals are the sizes that they are because of the nature of our planet. Its relative atmospheric size and its gravity. Water molecules affecting that is interesting, but I feel relatively confident that a species living on a gigantic planet with less gravity (so the trees could grow to tremendous heights without being unstable or whatever), the animals would be comparatively larger, regardless of water. I'm not certain of this.

A question: Has anyone consciously observed time speeding up? Hopefully we all agree that our perception of time is in constant fluctuation. But has anyone consciously been watching something speed up and slow down as you somatically adjust your brainwave state by doing math problems or writing a line of poetry or simply increasing your heartrate?

I just noticed it happening as I was staring at what is perhaps my least favorite emoticon (simply because it's so pretentious and blatantly crude): I was aware of the rate of rolls increasing and decreasing over a mere span of three or five seconds.